Goodbye, Miss Butterfly

Copyright © 2010 by Kenneth Arthur Eaton.

Library of Congress Control Number:  2010911994

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4535-5841-6

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4535-5840-9

ISBN: Ebook 978-1-4535-5842-3

Cover photo by Linda A. Nolan Eaton.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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CONTENTS

I: THE STORM

II: HARPSICHORDS OR SAXOPHONES

III: CODAS AND ECHOES

IV: AWAKE IN A DREAM OF WHITE

V: THE WARLOCK

VI: A KISS IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

VII: LOVE IS AN ARIA IN THREE-QUARTER TIME

EPILOGUE

For Anne, a Southern girl at heart.

For Mom and Dad L

              &

       Kenneth Hopkins Eaton . . . our search is over, Dad.

       For Ian.

       My brothers Doug and, Steven, and sisters, Joyce and Linda Eaton.

       My grandchildren, nieces and nephews . . . especially you, Jasmine.

       For Kate Bush and Maggie Teyte . . . England’s greatest sopranos.

       To Stephen Hill, a national treasure, and 27 years of Hearts of Space.

                     &

       For Bernice, The Spirit of The Lord

       And for Andrea and Carla at Xlibris.

       Thanks!

"Not to know what happened before we were

born is to remain perpetually a child.

For what is the worth of a human life unless it is

woven into the life of our ancestors

by the records of history."

—Cicero (106-43 BC)

We came out from the deep

To learn to love, to learn how to live.

We came out from the deep

To avoid the mistake we made.

That’s why we are here!

We came out from the deep

To help and understand, but not to kill.

It takes many lives till we succeed

To clear the debts of many hundreds years.

That’s why we are here!

Enigma

From The Cross of Changes

Illustrated by Ian Eaton

I

THE STORM

There is a time for everything,

       and a season for every activity under heaven.

Near the Arctic Circle in very northern Canada early in the last week of December, 1937, the darkest time of year, in a land where bad memories are banished in the vise of a frozen hell, and a sound can last a hundred years, where the orderly horizon blurring white can drive a man blind and mad, and where the storms of North America are born, one such later event happened, a not uncommon occurrence between the months of October and April. The first component of a winter storm called a nor’easter was beginning to form, storms of this nature, and this time of year being common and not unexpected. An arctic high pressure system had formed, circulating in a clockwise rotation and was beginning to move southeast. Off the coast of Florida, the second component was taking shape, and a large high-pressure system was forming, taking warm air from the Gulf Stream, gathering it and warm moisture from the Florida’s Atlantic side. It also was a typical occurrence this time of year and the leading northern edge of the spawning air mass contained strong northeasterly winds that was pulling it north up the East Coast, where they would meet some days later in darkness at Boston University campus, this early January, 1938, right after Christmas break.

In 1938, the Depression was still going, and the Great War had been over for twenty years. The South still had not risen again since the war between them and the North. That had been over for three-quarters of a century, though there were always societal skirmishes of a kind that went away and came back, both factions agreeing to disagree. Some would say the issue, the deadliest war in American history, was still not over. It would take more than a generation or two to sort out the personal and collective pain the war had wrought. The Victorian Age, long gone, had been run out of town by a technological hailstorm: electricity, telephones, automobiles, moving pictures, sound recordings, air travel, and radio. America would never look back.

Individuals with their ability to travel, communicate, and appreciate each other, their shared society and themselves formed a greater sense of self-worth as well as a collective appreciation. American individuality was evolving once again. Art was shaping life. The jazz age had begun earlier in 1920 with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise and his flappers, women’s right to vote, prohibition, and petting shirts: hand-knit, sleeveless loose jerseys—more functional than decorative—that were designed just in time for these more loose-moral, hands-on times, allowing for easier access to women’s zones no longer forbidden and off-limits.

A whole generation of American youth had almost been wiped out in the trenches in Europe. For what? An archduke. It was an old man’s war hoisted on the backs of the young. The Roaring Twenties, amidst the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibition in 1919, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan had roared in with a vengeance to make up for that lost time, and then roared out with the stock market crash and the Great Depression, though most that lived through it will swear there was nothing great about it. The nation had had a meltdown, not only as a country, but as individual Americans. Belief in the supremacy and resiliency of the individual was giving way to the idea that the government did indeed have a necessary and vital role over people, a belief still. African Americans were especially hit hard as Roosevelt paid farmers not to grow crops, depriving many black fieldworkers of jobs. In the cities, low-paying jobs held by blacks were going to now-out-of-work poor whites. People of all races survived only by means of their relief checks. In the winter of 1932-1933, right before FDR took office, a quarter of the American workforce was out of jobs. Never again would the American Dream, an ideal more closely examined in the thirties, be looked upon the same. Excess had turned to abscess.

People were still out of work, and some were questioning the validity of American capitalism and forces were at work in the United States, producing a middle-class Communist party. In Hollywood, the second generation of film producers had taken over, and in contrast to the original founding Jewish lions, many of whom were Eastern European immigrants with a history in retail and mercantilism giving the people what they wanted—entertainment and glorification of America—the new wave was attempting just the opposite: to give and define America a new vision of itself, with scarcely hidden communist screenwriters penning the way. In America, people were starving through economic disorder. In Stalinist Russia, between twenty and fifty million enemies of the state were being starved by its political counterpart. In just three years, East and West would be at war, accelerating the arrival of the Nuclear Age long before a still-primitive world could rightfully and morally handle the responsibility of it. Up to seventy million people would perish in this war, the deadliest ever. How many countless people, many times the dead, would be separated from themselves, their minds from their bodies, from their youth, their innocence, all never to be reclaimed? How many would go on living, but really not? How many would never be able to go back, not even in their dreams? Impossible to know, though some were probably lucky.

The music was good though in the twenties and it would only get better in the thirties. So was the dancing. In Harlem, blacks and whites danced together, doing the Lindy Hop, the Charleston, and the Black Bottom. Fitzgerald’s young protagonist in This Side of Paradise saw girls doing things that even in his memory would have been impossible. These girls could be found deep in an atmosphere of jungle music and the questioning of moral codes. It was a time of transition and test, not as if America had never been challenged before, but this was unmistakably different just by the sheer volume, pace, and depth of things. Norman Mailer later wrote that the horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.

There were places to escape to, however: books, music, and film. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, published in 1936, had been a best seller for two years and had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. History’s vast supply of literature was a world easy to get lost in for anyone of any means and education. The face of contemporary American literature was being forever changed. Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Henry Miller challenged censorship both in the mind and on paper as part of The Lost Generation. Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Alain Locke were part of the Harlem Renaissance, the first influential movement of black artists and writers who wrote to escape the economic injustice of the present, address the social wrongs of the past, and lay a new dream for the future. Not all Southerners were racist. Not all Northerners were free of racial prejudice. For writers, there was still work to be done, identifying trouble and bringing rich and poor, the North and South, whites and blacks, together into an America without economic geographical and racial boundaries. William Faulkner, E. E. Cummings, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Eugene O’Neill were part of this American literary resurgence, recording the passion of change they saw around them through the heat of their words.

Music, having other emotional and lifting positive qualities, was also another route to escapism. The radio was now present in most homes and through its speakers came all kinds of music, uniting in its own way peoples of different upbringing and culture, and, indeed, of different eras. Music can do that, and with the combined technology of the radio and the human spirit, all things were possible. According to composer Richard Rogers, breadlines seemed less burdensome if one could sing. Somehow, political chaos was less unsettling if you hummed through its storms. And Armageddon couldn’t threaten us if we kept whistling Bye Bye Blackbird. Mainstream Depression-era songs were upbeat, full of danceable rhythms, escapism, and optimism.

American film also chronicled the thirties, having evolved just in time into talkie films that had sound and that wonderful music destined for eternity. Busby Berkeley movies, musical stage revues, eased desperate hearts, growling bellies, and sullied pride by allowing the viewer easy access to the normally implausible dimension of New York sophistication and Hollywood glitter. These films were choreographed to engage vicarious wishful participation through softened fictionalized stories of triumph over adversity. Anyone able to pay the small price of a movie ticket could slide unseen into the darkened but lavish dream-rich comfort of the darkened theater where hope, humor, and raging success to acknowledged applause was the staple ending for the final reel. Each studio with its own stable of actors and genre, ranging from antihero gangster stories to musicals, to screwball comedies, would both inform about and deflect from America’s inner troubles.

Culture, literature, film, and music then would all have a Golden Era in the thirties, perhaps its finest ever, not defining and clarifying the individual even in excess as had art in the twenties, but by recognizing social awareness that must be collectively shared by all in these desperate times. People needed each other more than ever. It was a unifying force. You couldn’t let your next-door neighbor starve, even if you didn’t know his name. The progressive movement took hold in the midthirties, not so much in the context of the internationalist revolution, but by shaken—but still-loyal—citizens still believing in America. For all of the shared pessimism, World War II would prove just how intently Americans still believed about their values, their country, and their culture. They would later come to be known as The Greatest Generation, having defeated enemies of two wars, the Depression, and finally, Communism. Their lives would be defined by sacrifice, courage, loyalty, and a shared responsibility to themselves, the world, and to their children they did not yet know yet. They would ready a better world by their blood and toil, their unbelievable selflessness and sacrifice. A new generation would rebel against the 1950s, calling them stagnant, bland. That was The Greatest Generation’s reward to themselves, their only moment of peace and prosperity, as they finally gave themselves time for laughter and amusement. Burns and Allen, Kate Smith, and Bing Crosby on radio gave way to Uncle Miltie, Lucille Ball, and Groucho on that new invention called the television. Some, including their own children in the sixties, mocked them, even begrudging them that brief respite. The fifties had their own youthful rebels without causes. Be careful what you wish for, dad and grandpa could tell them.

For women, it was an exciting and irreverent time—they would never look back. Men had been liberated from their uniforms; women had been liberated from their Victorian collars and corsets. Flapper-wear in the Roaring Twenties, which included petting shirts and an undergarment thigh flask, was marked by short hair, shorter skirts, rolled hose, and powdered knees, as their flaming youth boyfriends watched and contested over them. Thin was in for the ladies. A prepubescent look of flattened silhouette with de-emphasized eyebrows, saucer eyes, turned-up nose and pouting lips became iconic. Coco Chanel in Paris designed and outfitted this urgent generation of young ladies with no time to waste in their moment of forever-art-deco-designed youth. By the end of 1929, more than half of single women were gainfully employed, discovering that the money they earned could buy the freedom for which they had yearned.

The coming World War II would also give these women a chance to cooperatively prove themselves in both the foreign lands of war and the peaceful, but managed hectic factories at home. Women had always been an underappreciated, underused force. That would change. Individually. there had always been strong, transformational women before that, not waiting for this war when the two would finally and forever meet. Angels without wings. So, women and song; all that was missing was the wine. Does a man really need to be thrice killed?

For all the intensity and splendor of these events, they were still composed of individuals and their stories. There was another place to escape to for a while at least: college, where people could create their own world despite it all and hopefully lay the foundations for their real world when they finally confront it. These students, born in the Jazz Age, were busy trying to do just that. For the most part. Just a group of ordinary kids unaware they would be part of an extraordinary generation.

II

HARPSICHORDS OR SAXOPHONES

. . . A time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance.

At 8:00 p.m. on Saturday night, in the same week as the storm from Canada had formed, a group of hyperanimated students, all boys, dressed appropriately in winter gear, was standing around outside the Boston University Theater, an off-campus theater that normally showed films. It had been rented this Saturday and changed back into its original setting as a live-performance venue this night for a small music recital. It had been purchased out for the night by one of the performing students’ well-heeled, rich parents as a belated Christmas gift. Chattering excitedly, the boys were about ready to go to The Hearth, a tavern across the street that featured touring second-tier dance bands, inexpensive but effective student-friendly liquors. Most importantly, there inhabited some of the most desirable, graced young women in America, now in their seasonal winter catching of carefully chosen, tensely fitted cashmere and wool sweaters that made the most wonderful grazing sound when they were dispatched by the hands of these boys, who had patiently watched their grammar-school, toothless gal-pals metamorphose into these exciting, beautiful, confident, educated women. All of the young ladies had different gifts, of course, but in the end they all had a minimum standard of combined attractiveness and intelligence that was overpowering in its Eros. Smart is sexy too in The Ivy League. One can imagine great bodies. Not so in the dark with intelligence, when the lovemaking is over and banter, analysis, and humor raise their heads for belated attention. One fellow, Colin, seemed apart from the rest of them, not as much in location but in demeanor. He and the group were trying to resolve a minicrisis before a much-predicted snowstorm. The evening, full of promise and magic, was not getting younger, only colder as they went on in debate.

Colin, what’s hot? Are you coming or not? the leader, Alex, the apparent pop culture sage, asked. We don’t all have all night, you know! Amber’s invited some friends—she says they’re the cat’s pajamas.

Fellas, I’m not sure, Colin said. I don’t have much jack. By the way, how’s Amber doing? What was it that you called her? The whole campus knows. She doesn’t seem to mind. She’s so funny and outgoing and natural. Who does that remind me of? It’s you, man! You’re a lucky guy—at least that’s what everybody thinks.

Oh yeah, I am. The Scream Queen. That’s what. When I gave her that name she just started laughing. She’s better than Faye Ray, you know? The only place we can go now is my car most of the time. We got kicked out of a motel because of all her howling. Can you believe that? I couldn’t even pay off the manager, like a . . . sound surcharge, you know? He said the other people were complaining.

What happened?

Well, I should have been embarrassed, but as we went out to the car you’ll never believe what happened.

OK, I’ll risk it . . . what happened?

Thanks . . . I’ll tell you what happened. I thought you’d never ask! Just kidding. Here’s what happened . . .

Alex, will you get on with it! Are you drunk already? If you are, it might give you an excuse for your terminally obnoxious behavior.

"Colin, I’m hurt! I’m always a charming gentleman forever looking out for his fellow man . . . and woman, especially the latter. And tonight I’m looking out for you. Who me, drunk? Well, maybe not drunk, but when I get low, I get high, as the song goes. And I’m never in a mood to be low, especially now with this night ahead of me. I’m . . . somewhere in between, if you ask, and you did. I’ve got to pace myself for this clambake. This could be an all-nighter. Last Saturday before classes begin again. Don’t worry, I’m young and in shape. I can handle it. It’s not like this is the first time. I am a finely tuned athlete in these circumstances ready to pledge victory for the common man.

You, noble sir are a most undaunted and motivated warrior.

Yes, a warrior of love, Colin, most willing to sacrifice my body for the splendid cause.

Need any more volunteers to fill the depleted ranks?

Funny you should ask. That’s the spirit. Always. So anyway, back to my story. A lot of the couples came out from their rooms and . . . I swear to God they started . . . applauding me! Jesus, I’m not kidding—the guys did anyway, some of the girls, too. They had their girls behind them, like they were protecting them from me . . . me, King Kong! Don’t blame them. Guess they didn’t trust them . . . or me! The gals were smiling, not too much, but I could tell they thought it was pretty funny. Maybe didn’t want to make their boyfriends nervous or jealous or something. Can you believe that?

Yes I can, embarrassed to say. You two make a good couple. I don’t want to be too serious, but you’re both so open and honest about things. Others would be embarrassed. You’ll do okay with her, man!

Thanks. We get together sometimes when my parents are gone so she can have the run of the house so to speak, though she does scare the poodle. Man that girl can . . . Anyway, I have to put a pillow back against her head and between the wall, what with all the pounding she takes. She says I give her a headache . . . a love headache! She likes to call me Gene Krupa because of how I beat her like a drum.

Are you sure you want to tell me all this out loud? The whole campus can hear. I just went to confession. I think this may be classified as some kind of sin. We have a lot of them, you know. It’s sometimes hard to keep track. Very very tedious. I could do without them.

Don’t worry, you’re fine. I’ll take the blame when the time comes. Sure man. I’ve . . . we’ve got our reputation to keep up. So are you coming or not? Hell, everybody knows, anyway. You’re always the last to know. We’re animals! Hell, we should make a nature film.

A silent or a talkie? Seems to me this qualifies as both a complete audio and visual extravaganza!

Okay Colin, that was funny. Watch it. I’ll handle the humor. That is, at least until I pass out!

Sorry, didn’t mean to usurp your witty authority. You are The King, you know.

Yes, I know. I am . . . The King. King Kong, like I said. Did I tell you the story about . . . oh Christ, yes. Forgot what I just saying. Man, maybe I did start out too fast tonight. It’s all the more reason for you to guard me lest I commit any regretful impropriety under the influence of love or whiskey or both that may somehow offend this great institution of learning we have unreasonably conscripted ourselves to for the duration of the Depression.

Speak for yourself on that one. I’ll be glad to get out of here. And as for your parents, you know what? It’s probably too late in the game now to be worrying about what they think of you and some trifle thing like alcohol poisoning. Like you said: you’ve got your reputation to maintain and keep.

Yeah you’re right, there, Colin—right as always. I guess you are all counting on me for a leadership role in these highly competitive social circumstances. A man has to make the supreme sacrifice to bed and wed these fine dames that run amok around here, come winter, spring, summer, or fall. They’re fast; man has got to be faster, quicker, and stronger. They pretend they’re not interested but we know better. They’re always interested. It’s an age-old game and we must outthink them as well. You’re a good Joe for putting up with me. I like you, man. Hey, listen to me! I’m becoming quite the poet, huh?

You like everybody in your condition, poetry or not. Don’t give up your day gig, though. Nobody’s ever a stranger to you, even when you’re sober. I like you, too, man. I’m glad you’re with friends. They’ll keep an eye out for you. But like I said, I don’t have enough jack. I’m down to my last frog-skin. Jeez, I don’t even think I have that. I spent too much at Christmas. You know. Look what I gave you, man!

Yes. Man, thanks! How’d you ever get a hold of that book? It’s not supposed to be for sale here.

Well, it’s not easy. Okay, it did cost a little bit. I’ve got connections. What’d you think?

The Tropic of Cancer. I still haven’t figured out what the title’s got to do with anything. It’s dirty, though, that’s what counts. Makes me hard, though.

Hell, everything makes you hard, man. You’re one-of-a-kind. How does Amber trust you?

That’s easy. I love her, she loves me. That’s the way it is. You don’t mind being with one person. You’ll see. How about seeing tonight? Come on! There are so many beautiful and smart women there. There’s a new sax player there that plays great. I’ve heard him before, name’s Michael. He’ll make you cry, man! Shit, these bimbos will make you cry; they’ll break your heart, man! And they’re all waiting for you, Colin, genius Colin. Man, you know all the right words. You’ve been studying them all your life. What for? Now’s the time to put them into good use. You’re a natural, man! One drink, okay, two, with all these suave sweet words you know of and off you’ll be to places with them you haven’t even imagined, not even with that great head of yours. Think of all the stories you can concoct from just this one night. There’s a thousand things a minute happening in that joint. It’s a writer’s dream.

Well don’t you two burn each other out before your time. And look at you tryng to turn this into a school project! Man, you are funny. Hey, I’m broke, I told you. Besides, I’m not going to be taking communion tomorrow with alcohol on my breath. That is most probably a sin. I hate those! I like to go at least twenty-four hours without one after confession! Looks good on my spiritual resume. And the less I got to say in that sweatbox the better, as far as I’m concerned!

What! Are you going to join the seminary? You don’t have to be perfect. I thought you guys were into wine. How’s the priest to know? He’s just taken a slurp himself . . . maybe more than just some slurps from what I hear. After two or three masses he’s got to be feeling closer to God and the angels themselves! Anyway, that’s OK, we’re buying; you never have enough money, as well-to-do as your mom is. We’re all buying; we’ve all chipped in. I’d pay for this just to see it: Colin with a fine-looking dame all his own. That’s always your excuse for not going out. You don’t have one this time, so come on. It’s getting cold! There’s a storm coming, I can feel it!

I don’t know. It does sound . . . interesting, kind of nice. And stop blaspheming. Mom keeps me on a tight purse string. She doesn’t want me getting carried away and into trouble. If she were here right now, looking at you and what you got planned for me tonight, she’d be telling me that she told me so, and to always trust your mom. Moms do know best. That . . . is a given. Every book will tell you that if you haven’t picked up on that by now.

"Just kidding. Sorry. Oh, sorry, Mom, too! I’m feeling good right now. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Interesting, nice! That’s all you can say? An English major?"

Sorry! Actually, I do know, Colin thought You guys should leave me alone. Burn your brain cells. What a shame for you. That other part sounds does sound interesting, though. Sorry, Alex. That’s the best I can come up with at the moment. A girl on my arm . . . that’s sounds . . . nice . . . no other words come to mind, even for an English major. I’m not cute, though. Girls love cute guys, or guys that tell them lies they want to hear. I’ll never have a chance, then . . . already two strikes against me as I walk through the door. That’s screwed, I’m screwed . . . loose undemanding women . . . I wonder if that’s all that’ll love me . . . what . . . they have hearts bigger than most . . . don’t make fun of them . . . they know how to manage them. Unpretentious women . . . simple minded but desperate. Not a compliment . . . who wants to manage your heart? It needs to fly on its own . . . better off dead . . . only thing worse than a broken heart is no heart at all. How about one that’s in chains? That’s what I’m saying . . . let your heart rule once in awhile . . . trust it. Just wait, man. Some girl will like you. Wonder why they don’t like me . . . if I looked like Valentino . . . yeah, look at him, he’s dead . . . probably an overdose of girls. Best to go out with a smile on your face, though. Probably still there.

Don’t tell me you’re going to go back to the dorm and study! Jesus, it’s Saturday night! I’ve never seen you with a girl. Have you ever been with a girl?

Of course, a few times. I study a lot. That’s why I get good grades. I don’t really have to study hardly at all. Lucky me . . . I just like being alone sometimes . . . I like myself . . . don’t take it personally . . . I’m waiting, lying in ambush for her. No need to rush things. My mind’s wandering. I’m getting tired of this conversation. It’s not going anywhere and neither am I with you tonight.

A few times, that doesn’t sound very convincing! Bet you never even been drunk either, have you?

A few ti-

A few times, yeah, I know. Bullshit. So now’s your chance to prove all this. So let’s 23 skidoo. Prohibition’s over and we’re all free, white, and twenty-one. Let’s get to The Hearth. There are so many women there.

Oh, and if a little is good, more is better right?

Exactly, Colin. That’s the spirit! I knew I’d wear you down. Choice, man. It’s all about choice! We’re capitalists, remember? Supply and demand affects availability and price!

Glancing over to the theater, Colin said, Listen to that music over there! It gets better the closer we get to it. Isn’t that great? Stop making me lie!

Not as great as the Duke Coates Big Band. I hear they got that new Negro saxophone player that’s the real McCoy.

I know, you said that. Let’s see. I can go with you guys and wake up with a hangover tomorrow, or I can go over to this concert now and wake up with me replaying that violin and those lovely voices in my head.

Or you can wake up with a real sweet patootie you just screwed who’s going to blow out that hangover in a hurry with another round of early morning sexcapades! How’s that for Sunday church service? Come on, you’re only young once so they tell me, but I’m not believing it. This can’t never end. Can’t never. Last chance!

Sorry, maybe next week. And stop blaspheming! There’s a recital going on in Boston Theater over there. I hear one of the performer’s dads rented it out for the night. That’s really where I was headed. Listen. That music sounds like its being performed by angels. Want to go slumming with me? Between that and the rainstorm it will wash you clean.

There you go. Damn poet, damn English Lit Major. He’s out there . . . again! Wot a life. Mother’s calling. It’s your choice. Bye, man! Let’s go, men; off to the hunt! Bye, Colin. I still like you, man! I’m not taking this personally.

Thanks! Say hello to Amber for me! Hey, you dropped your flask! You’re an ass, by the way!

I know it. She likes that, too! I can already feel her firm womanly grasp around it! My flask, where? Oh man, shit . . . I didn’t bring one. Hey, you’re kidding me. Yeah. I told you, I’d handle the humor, man. You got me that time. I owe you one, Colin.

Colin gave Alex the last word. How could I top that? What enthusiasm. Jesus. Of course he looks like a Greek God. That’s hard to compete with. I . . . on the other hand look like a goddamned Greek.

III

CODAS AND ECHOES

. . . A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain.

The group turned in a mass, like a school of frightened fish, while Colin turned in the opposite direction, a lone wolf. He wished them well, calling over his shoulder, and trudged through the snow over to the hall as the group clumped off to the tavern, already not missing him. Colin stayed on the pathways while the group, more concerned with promises of wine, women, and song blazed, rather blasphemously in Colin’s opinion, a dozen strident new trails through the lawns of the snow-covered frozen floor. Lapsing into freestyle, guiltless, streaming metaphor and double entendre it reminded him of

. . . an agitated assembly of misplaced temperate-zoned wildebeests in a forever-rutting season alerted by an unseen predator . . . in movement . . . in instinct . . . in direction of safer ground for that watering hole: The Hearth . . . The Hearth . . . a name as warm as primitive as feelings it generates and houses. The Hearth . . . on fire this Saturday night now with music and soul and that new colored boy with saxophone in hand calling with a wink and a forbidding solo that seeks to loose and change minds forever with his razored jazz. It’s Africa on the move. Aren’t we all lucky for it? A migratory home territory of familiar social reassurances and well-being the herd knew well. A journey not of two thousand miles . . . longer . . . a defying social task where unmarked confused trails of love and lust carry the seeker on unmapped virgin roads that lend not hospitality rest or solace. Danger . . . thrills . . . triumph . . . disappointment await the conscripts. They turn past each other around each other through each other finding mostly heartbreak and hate for every wrong turn taken. Its users misdirected . . . unenthused by the guilty glare of emptied whiskey bottles fouling the bearing in an ending where only those hard of heart and head finish whole as braying victors. Strong males mostly. Unburdened males made swift by the absence of child-rearing conscience and responsibility . . . nothing more than sperm donors actually . . . this fortressed pleasure palace where what would take place a lifesaving defensive last stand . . . with truth-stretching, storytelling survivors waking up the next morning lips locked together fighting overnight dryness seeking moisture responding first with more impulse than reason. Then turn embarrassed . . . then kissing finally the hairy unfamiliar pitted morning recaressing resanctifying now-deadened hesitant zones so alive and responsive before the continual alcohol flush of previous night rendered quiet and lifeless their present absent quiver . . . their clothing and gear hijacked off them during the night’s mêlée unreal . . . a mad real wet dream that stripped bodies and bloodied them to the bone very worse-off for the up and down back and forth nature of unscripted battle . . . cocky and erect in a claimed exaggerated victory, this army of volunteers forsaking the warning remitted by a lonely sinister black lighthouse planted deeply into the knob of an overlooking crevice facing the vibrating sea. A phallus fighting for purpose standing firm with its blood red swirling tipped light piercing revolving futile into the impaling sea and against the wet hum of a tasting wind so quickly unimpressed she lifts her hands off and goes looking for greater and taller magistrates to fell with her indiscriminate devil’s tongue. She . . . at once ripped out of the maelstrom sent like a common joy-girl as a lashing gale gone awry to message a reminder for sailors that never once took heed of delight or warning that simple but readable red sky. A smoke-choked theatre of war with its few hardened in-and-out heavy breathing guttural sounds here and there . . . teenage bodies about . . . some moving, some groaning, some grooming, some asleep, some feigning sleep planning their premature ejection and egress suspecting forgivably in this trial of youth and the memory by the gracing cleansing feature of alcohol. They are burdened naught with previous night’s memory, fearing the worst at what unsatisfied foul-breathed sleeping victim may lie next to them still having yearn for further contest. Once a pastoral Flanders Field, it has turned into a killing field that lay within easy reconnoiter at the pack’s unified turn. Their strategy was first about offense rather than defense . . . this former grass-grazing herd aborting their leafy leisurely dalliance . . . now turned predatory, carnivorous, needy, salivating for meat in attack mode . . . moving steadily downwind, not afraid to show their coming intention toward their expensively scented perfumed youth-charged estrogenic suspecting quarry . . . the cream of Boston’s Debutante Corps. The herd’s strategy being to camouflage themselves as a benevolent master . . . baiting them into an easy senselessness with wine and half-truths . . . the herbivores turned now into a fearsome hormonally-enraged self-contained wolf pack themselves with no more need for masks, role-playing or bedded inventions. They were warned and had been prepared for the outlawed Great War’s formidable risk of germ warfare, insulating themselves in a precautionary action of prophylactic readiness, taking no chances in dealing with the life-altering consequences . . . those one-celled microscopic agents of invisible destruction as deadly and as life-altering as any bullet. It had been a rout . . . no contest, as ravenous army ants cornering en masse then breaking off into individual hungry units without foreplay or premeditation . . . an unstoppable march only a man-made orgasmic disaster could halt as they dwelled in the moist aromatic recess of the promised land . . . a perpetual contest of nature recorded since man could draw and write . . . yes, men . . . men only, by the way . . . as the untutored gatherers their women, these debutante’s ancient grandmothers . . . all too pitted and hairy themselves for modern tastes . . . too busy lopping and cooking dinosaur kill in the back of a choking sooty cave where the first kitchen was probably misogynystically located. They . . . counting down the centuries until a popular social convention was discovered in China, looking forward to that day when they too could have their feet bound at birth gimping through life with a new but arduous painful feminine pride.

Colin chuckled to himself at his overdone, once-in-a-lifetime, grade-killing, schoolboy improvisation but forgave himself, thinking that If I’m going to jump off a cliff and kill myself, I might as well stay with it and laugh all the way to the bottom enjoying the view. Why stop, he said? Gravity, momentum always wins. I’ll just pick myself off the ground, dust myself off, look around and be off with it before anyone would know better. Imagine my even greater irreverence to the English language if I was drunk. Boy, that’d be dangerous.

Besides, he thought, no one will ever read this, he assured himself, looking around briefly in a short spasm of well-earned guilt. A voice in his head reminded Colin that he was never alone.

Yes, good thing, too. You know better than that, Colin . . . 

Dr. Penelope Keenan! What are you doing in my head again? This isn’t American poetry. What are you eavesdropping for? OK, you got me but it was just for fun . . . fun! Would it have been better if I had rhymed it? Just a rough beginning. Oh, man. I was just messing around. I was just kicking it out. I did give it a ride, okay?

No, Colin. No you didn’t. Let’s not press your luck! There’s a depression out there you know, and it’s going to be hard enough as it is for an English major to get a job after graduation. Stop with the jargon. twit! They want people out there that can make things, let alone destroy the English language we’ve all been working so hard through these centuries to preserve and improve upon.

Professor, have a sense of humor. It was a solid sender that should have chilled you. I’ll bet Alex and the guys would have been dying with laughter if they heard it.